Page 57 of Handling the CEO

To: Mr. Smith

He found the fax and Anya is out. Will have to check in myself.

From: Mr. Smith

To: Michaela

You do that, can’t lose NASA

From: Michaela

To: Mr. Smith

Code is ready. Board is called for the afternoon; he will walk right into it. Send your son to Dahlia’s house on Monday.

“As for the best part—someone here forgot to remove their signature from the bottom of their email…” DJ throws the last image and there is nowhere to hide now for Mike.

Kenneth Simmons

US Senator

The room is quiet again, and I put the finishing touches on the ‘smoking gun’.

“After locating these emails, I called my good friend NASA Flight Director Gary Nichols—helps we are all Floridians—and turns out they did hear of the weather software. Because a certain senator assured them of ownership as part of a publicity stunt, whereas part of his re-election campaign he would be supporting space exploration, as it’s all the trend these days with billionaires sending cars to the orbit, etc. But where it gets even more complicated is that… he heard of this software about a year and a half ago.”

“Which is exactly when my ex-husband attempted to try to convince me to give our marriage another chance. When that failed, as he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, he convinced the judge to give him half the code,” DJ fills them in, and the pieces of the puzzle all fitting together as she pulls extra pictures. “We also googled their names together after seeing the emails. Here, as you can see here in a picture from the Winter Ball in Los Angeles a couple of years back, the Senator is having an intense-looking conversation with… Ms. Jones.”

“You fuckers, you played me!” Miranda explodes from her chair. “You never planned on giving me the software, did you?” she asks Richard, who doesn’t answer.

“We don’t think he ever did. They just needed a ‘villain’—you, in case you were wondering—to convince me to work with someone they can access, in this case McAv,” my girlfriend wraps it up. “I am sure that if it wasn’t for that press conference and Mike’s pushing, Jon wouldn’t have allowed a contract without ownership, like you tried to have with me, and I refused. They were perhaps hoping I would just save everything on the company’s servers, but it was mostly on my own company’s private cloud.”

DJ has a drink of water and continues. “They wanted to film me and my team probably while coding, and that is why Ms. Jones ‘accidentally’ let slip about my preference to work from home, which set Jon off and got me to come into the office. What they didn’t anticipate, though, was me liking the IT department with its unpolished and dark ambiance instead of working upstairs in the very-camera-heavy but visually delightful main floors. That, and me disconnecting the cameras in there first chance I got.”

“That little hitch also disturbed their fax-sending scheme to Lex Aviation, as they couldn’t very well go by DJ’s desk every day to send documents out,” I add. “And I suspect our relationship—which randomly caused you to be in the office more than expected—was a bit of a surprise. Unfortunately, Mike found a way to use it, by having us sign the forms and show them to the Board exactly when the time was right for her. They put new cameras around your desk and got you on video as you came to make sure there were no accidental parts of the software saved locally in McAv’s servers.”

“That’s enough!” Gus Lemkin, the Board member, is heard through the speakers. “We have all heard enough, and the evidence is quite compelling.”

As Mike looks around the room in panic, DJ smiles. “Oh, we did forget to say we have been live streaming this to Jon’s Board? We have a nice recording as well. It helps to have some reassurance that we won’t find ourselves under an IRS audit sent by a certain member of the government as retribution for throwing a spanner in the works.”

“McAv Aviation does not want to work with anyone using blackmail or this sort of manipulation, Ms. Jones. Consider yourself out of a job,” the board representative continues. “Jon, I don’t suppose you’d like your old post back?”

“You son of a bitch, you ruined everything,” Michaela starts in a chilling voice. “I had it all worked out—I finally managed to get you out of my company. You should have never been given the CEO role, a tattooed playboy who never held a proper job in his life. It was my sweat and blood that kept McAv in business.”

“Your father knew how good I was, how much I sacrificed,” she continues quietly, staring into nothing, and the rest of people in the room stare at her like she lost the plot. “And then he passed away and you, golden boy, just get given the keys to MY kingdom. You, with your smiles and jokes with the staff, manage to convince them you can actually do the job. Sadly keeping it for so many years, while I do all the grunt work,” Mike shakes her head in disbelief, as if all the effort I put in didn’t matter.

“Grunt work? What the fuck are you talking about—you were VP handling contracts, not a janitor!” I counter, slightly shocked at her opinion.

“I should have been CEO. When Kenneth came to me with an offer to bring this stupid code, I jumped to the chance to get some proper government connections for his help. You just had to go and sleep with her, didn’t you, and mess everything up?”

“You messed everything up, and now everybody knows exactly what you are. Using your son, Richard, Anya and even Miranda here just to get to a job which my father would have never given you, despite your delusions of grandeur.” I get up myself, towering over her. “You know why? Because you can manage contracts and handle admin tasks, but without me to charm everyone, and to have actual on-the-job conversations with the engineers and technicians, you would have run McAv into the ground. Oh, and the police want to talk to you as well. You won’t be getting away with only losing your job and a pat on the back.”

I look towards the cameras instead of Mike, who no longer interests me.

“Lemkin, my name is on the fucking company headers. I should have never been kicked out. When I’m back, I will be revising my contract in detail. Especially as my mate Gary from NASA would certainly like to collaborate with Dahlia and myself—and by extension McAv—on using and testing the weather predictor. Guess that would really be a good selling point for us, don’t you agree?”

“What? A NASA contract? That would be fantastic. Our customers will buy everything we offer if we are part of the space race!” Another board member pitches in, but I can’t tell who it is by just the voice. “McMaster, that is great news! Let’s meet in the office next week!”

“Yeah let’s. But for now—anyone else here has anything to say? No? In that case, I’ll show you all the exit. Hey Lexington—maybe we can talk about reducing some costs if both our companies are in the same state.”

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